Small percentage of spoilt ballots

Pretoria - The number of spoilt ballot papers, from those counted in early results on Thursday morning, represented only a small percentage of ballots cast.

Figures at 04:33 from the Electoral Commission of SA's (IEC) national operations centre in Pretoria show that out of 1 893 269 votes national election votes counted countrywide, 24 842 were spoiled, equalling 1.31% of votes counted.

The province where the most ballots proportionally were spoilt was the North West, where out of 87 868 votes counted, 1 642 ballots had been spoiled, equalling 1.87%.

Leading up to election day on Wednesday, former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils and former deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge led the "Sidikiwe! Vukani! Vote No! Campaign".

The campaign was aimed at convincing struggle activists and others not to vote for the ANC, but rather to vote for a small political party - not the Democratic Alliance - or at least spoil their votes by writing "no" on the ballot paper.

They said this tactical voting would help deepen democracy through diminishing the ruling party's majority.

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